Family

Why do we make our music?
    Oh, blind dark strings reply:
Because we dwell in a strange land
    And remember a lost sky.
We ask no leaf of the laurel,
    We know what fame is worth;
But our songs break out of our winter
    As the flowers break out on the earth.

And we dream of the unknown comrade,
    In the days when we lie dead,
Who shall open our book in the sunlight,
    And read, as ourselves have read,
On a lonely hill, by a firwood,
    With whispering seas below,
And murmur a song we made him
    Ages and ages ago.

If making his may-time sweeter
    With dews of our own dead may,
One pulse of our own dead heart-strings
    Awake in his heart that day,
We would pray for no richer guerdon,
    No praise fr...

I was very cold
    In the summer weather;
The sun shone all his gold,
But I was very cold--
Alas, we were grown old,
    Love and I together!
Oh, but I was cold
    In the summer weather!

Sudden I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen:
"Truly, scorn did harm her!"
I said, and I grew warmer;
"Better men the charmer
    Knows at least a dozen!"
I said, and I grew warmer
    Though the brooks were frozen.

Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover;
And my heart at rest
Lies in the spring's young nest:
My love she loves me best,
    And the frost is over!
Spring sits on her nest,
    Daisies and white clover!

    Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
    With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright,
By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
    With its own warmth and light.


    O'erblown by Southland airs,
The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
    With shifting shade and sheen.


    Hark! and you may not hear
A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
    Chafed ...

Frolic virgins once these were,
Overloving, living here;
Being here their ends denied
Ran for sweet-hearts mad, and died.
Love, in pity of their tears,
And their loss in blooming years,
For their restless here-spent hours,
Gave them hearts-ease turn'd to flowers.

As the funeral train with its honoured dead
    On its mournful way went sweeping,
While a sorrowful nation bowed its head
    And the whole world joined in weeping,
I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,
    Of the one fond heart despairing,
And I said to myself, as in truth I might,
    "How sad must be this SHARING."

To share the living with even Fame,
    For a heart that is only human,
Is hard, when Glory asserts her claim
    Like a bold, insistent woman;
Yet a great, grand passion can put aside
    Or stay each selfish emotion,
And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,
    Its rival - the world's devotion.

But Death should render to love its own,
    And my heart bowed down and sorrowed
For the stricken woman who wep...

I


Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow
As some round apple hung
High in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow
The branch-like mists among:
Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,
Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;
And by his side, clad on with rustic wealth
Of field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,
A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:
While through the quiet trees,
The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,
Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,
Around whose wheel the breeze
And shimmering ripples of the water play,
As, by their mother, little children may.


II


Sweet spirit of the moon, who walkest,--lifting
Exhaustless on thy arm,
A pearly vase of fire,--through the s...

My love for thee is like a winged seed
    Blown from the heart of thy rare beauty's flower,
    And deftly guided by some breezy power
To fall and rest, where I should never heed,
In deepest caves of memory. There, indeed,
    With virtue rife of many a sunny hoar, -
    Ev'n making cold neglect and darkness dower
Its roots with life, - swiftly it 'gan to breed,
Till now wide-branching tendrils it outspreads
    Like circling arms, to prison its own prison,
Fretting the walls with blooms by myriads,
    And blazoning in my brain full summer-season:
Thy face, whose dearness presence had not taught.
In absence multiplies, and fills all thought.

I.

    Now Nature hangs her mantle green
        On every blooming tree,
    And spreads her sheets o' daisies white
        Out o'er the grassy lea:
    Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams,
        And glads the azure skies;
    But nought can glad the weary wight
        That fast in durance lies.

II.

    Now lav'rocks wake the merry morn,
        Aloft on dewy wing;
    The merle, in his noontide bow'r,
        Makes woodland echoes ring;
    The mavis wild wi' mony a note,
        Sings drowsy day to rest:
    In love and freedom they rejoice,
        Wi' care nor thrall opprest.

III.

    Now blooms the lily by the bank,
        The primrose down the brae;
    The hawthorn's budding in the glen,

1.

Well! thou art happy, and I feel
That I should thus be happy too;
For still my heart regards thy weal
Warmly, as it was wont to do.


2.

Thy husband's blest - and 'twill impart
Some pangs to view his happier lot:
But let them pass - Oh! how my heart
Would hate him if he loved thee not!


3.

When late I saw thy favourite child,
I thought my jealous heart would break;
But when the unconscious infant smil'd,
I kiss'd it for its mother's sake.


4.

I kiss'd it, - and repress'd my sighs
Its father in its face to see;
But then it had its mother's eyes,
And they were all to love and me.


5.

Mary, adieu! I must away:
While thou art blest I'll not repine;
But ne...

The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume,
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red,
The maples like torches aflame overhead.

But what if the joy of the summer is past,
And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast?
For me dull November is sweeter than May,
For my love is its sunshine, - she meets me to-day!

Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest?
Will the needle swing back from the east or the west?
At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate;
A friend may prove laggard, - love never comes late.

Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet.
Too early! Too early! She could not forget!
When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed,
She will flash full in sight at t...

How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge,
The changing heaven the breezy weather,

More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears.

How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter far
Than laughing mirth's most joyous swell
However pure its raptures are.

Come, sit down on this sunny stone:
'Tis wintry light o'er flowerless moors,
But sit, for we are all alone
And clear expand heaven's breathless shores.

I could think in the withered grass
Spring's budding wreaths we might discern;
The violet's eye might shyly flash
And young leaves shoo...

The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.

But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange, yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indem...

In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,
    And I wander about them at will;
And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms
    Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.
I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:
    From a turret that looks on the wave.
But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade,
    A stone standing guard, by a grave.

To Memory's attic I clambered one day,
    When the roof was resounding with rain.
And there, among relics long hidden away,
    I rummaged with heart-ache and pain.
A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,
    A pastime, out-grown, and forgot,
And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust,
    Were lying heaped up in one spot.

And there on the floor of that garret was tossed
    A friendshi...

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
Fr...

I
Enchanter of Erin, whose magic has bound us,
Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim,
Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us
That blush into life at the sound of thy name.

The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers, -
I hear the old song with its tender refrain, -
What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers
What perfume of youth in each exquisite strain!

The home of my childhood comes back as a vision, -
Hark! Hark! A soft chord from its song-haunted room, -
'T is a morning of May, when the air is Elysian, -
The syringa in bud and the lilac in bloom, -

We are clustered around the "Clementi" piano, -
There were six of us then, - there are two of us now, -
She is singing - the girl with the silver soprano -
How...

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the
tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not
agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

For some the river of life would seem
    Free from the shallow, the reef, or bar,
As they gently glide down the silvery stream
    With scarcely a ripple, a lurch, or jar;
But under the surface, calm and fair,
    Lurk the hidden snags, and the secret care;
The waters are deepest where still, and clear,
And the sternest anguish forbids a tear.

For others, the pathway of life is strewn
    With many a thorn, for each rose or bud;
And their journey o'er mountain, o'er moor, and dune,
    Can be plainly tracked by footprints of blood;
But deeper still lies the hidden smart
    Of some secret sorrow, which gnaws the heart,
And rankles under a surface clear;
For the sternest anguish forbids a tear.

But, when the journey's end we see,
    At the ba...